Quick-service restaurants face a number of conflicting factors when striving to efficiently provide fast, good tasting, and safe food. First, customers expect to receive their food quickly, with a minimum of delay and with predictable and constant high quality. Moreover, the rate of customer demand varies over time, with some periods, such as lunch and dinner times, having extremely high rates of customer demand. However, the kitchens of many quick-service restaurants are of limited size and/or production capacity and thus necessarily have a limited number of food cooking devices.
To meet the often competing factors of quick service and consistent high quality, it is advantageous for a crew person to cook a relatively substantial amount of food product in bulk and store the cooked food product in food trays while another crew person transfers food from the trays to a sandwich bun or individual portion sized container, for example, to fill customer orders. Typical food products that are of most interest to have readily available for crew persons include sandwich fillings such as hamburger patties, breaded fish fillets, Canadian bacon, pork sausage, eggs, and breaded chicken patties, for example, as well as other products, such as chicken nuggets, biscuits, muffins, and hotcakes.
Because these prepared food products, e.g., sandwich fillings, are not being served immediately upon preparation, it is important to store the food product so as to optimally maintain the appearance, taste, temperature and texture of the food product, as well as minimize bacterial contamination of the stored food product.
A need exists for an improved food tray and a method of using the food tray that optimizes, without any significant adverse effects, the appearance, taste, temperature and texture of the pre-cooked bulk food products, as well as minimize bacterial contamination of such stored food products. In addition, a need also exists for a food staging device that promotes efficient food handling and use of space within the kitchen of the quick-service restaurant.
Additionally, prior art food trays were required to be periodically cleaned and dried, such as after about every four hours of use. In quick-service restaurants having extended opening hours during which food is served throughout the day, food trays may be cleaned as many as five or six times per day. During the time of cleaning, the trays are unavailable for holding cooked food. Thus, there is a need for a food tray that is more efficient.